Hello everyone,
I've worked at two hospitals in my career. The first one where I was precepted I was taught to hang dilaudid in a 50cc bag over 15 minutes to avoid giving the pt a high and perhaps snowing them. At this new place I work they all push it. We have a lot of drug seekers that come in, the nurses push (often high doses) of dilaudid, then I'm their nurse and they complain because I hang it. My take is that they are mad because they aren't getting a rush. I am not comfortable pushing, for example 4mg of dilaudid. In my previous experience when hanging it people got effective more long term relief when I hung it. Now I'm questioning it as I want to give the drug appropriately. It says in the drug book that it can be pushed over 2-5 minutes but it says nothing about hanging it. Just out of curiosity, how do you all give IV narcotics?